Whether you need perfectly legible body text or headlines with impact, we round up the best free Google web fonts.

Looking to start your next digital project? Be it a website, app or other screen-based venture, there’s an abundance of high-quality and (best of all) free web fonts out there. Let’s take a look at some of the best options. You’ll find them all, and many more, at fonts.google.com.

Commissioned by Google Fonts for use in Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, but suitable for any project, Spectral is a versatile serif face created by Production Type in Paris that's available with seven weights of Roman and Italic, from Extra-Light through to Extra-Bold, with small caps included. Inspired by six centuries of French-type design, it's designed to look good on-screen, making even the most text-heavy pages easier to read.

Relentlessly upbeat with friendly brushed glyphs, Bubblegum Sans is a big and bouncy font designed by Angel Koziupa of Sudtipos and produced by Ale Paul. It's something of a 21st century tribute to the sort of lettering you'd see in 1930s advertising, with, we reckon, just a hint of Dr Seuss madcap charm.

If you're after an eye-catching sans serif display font, it's terribly easy to go for the ubiquitous Impact, especially if you don't have Compacta Bold to hand, but if you want something a little more suitable for modern use then Vernon Adams' Anton is a smart pick. Anton has been reworked from traditional advertising sans serifs, then digitised and reshaped for use as a webfont, with the counters opened up and the stems optimised for use on-screen.

A sans-serif family with five weights – Light, Regular, Medium, Bold and Black, all with italics – Rubik has subtle, rounded corners and is ideal for both body copy and headlines. It was designed by Philipp Hubert and Sebastian Fischer at Hubert and Fischer.

A display font (recommended to be used above 30pt) much in the style of Alex Trochut, Monoton is a contemporary take on metalpress fonts, is another font designed by Vernon Adams. It's perfect for a quirky headline on your site – as the estimated 320,000 websites it has been used on proves. Pair it with a modern serif for a contemporary yet classic feel.

Karla is a grotesque sans-serif typeface in Regular and Bold (along with italics) with some rather nice quirks – check out the subtle, curved descenders on the ‘q’ and ‘y’, for instance. Designed by Jonny Pinhorn, it's equally appealing at over 40pt right down to body copy sizes. It supports Latin and Tamil scripts.

According to its Google Fonts description, Baloo is "a perfect blend of pointy paws in a coat of fur". While we're not sure it's quite that animalistic, we think it's an intriguing rounded display face, that’s also available in nine Indian scripts along with a Latin counterpart. It's versatile and, well, rather beautiful.

Neuton is hugely versatile Dutch-inspired face by designer Brian Zick. It's a little like Times in structure, with its large height, short extenders, and compact width and is perfect for body copy. It's available in Extra-Light, Light, Regular, Regular Italic, Bold and Extra Bold.

If you’re looking for an all-caps typeface for a bit of impact in your headlines or supporting text, Alegreya SC may be just the ticket. Pair it with the rest of the Alegreya family for elegant consistency across your screen projects.

A little bit condensed, a little bit rounded, and a little bit quirky in its rounded terminals and soft appearance, Lilita One is a fun display font for headlines and shorter text (perhaps navigational elements). It's best used at 40pt and above, we reckon.

Worth checking out, even though it's currently only available in Regular

EB Garamond is an open source revival of Claud Garamond’s classic typeface from the mid-16th century, and we can’t really explain it in any more detail. A sublime and elegant body font, even if it is only available in Regular at this point. It’s worth checking out Cormorant Garamond, as well.

Available in Regular, Regular Italic, Bold and Bold Italic, Lora is a serif font particularly suited to reams of body text. Google says "the overall typographic voice of Lora perfectly conveys the mood of a modern-day story, or an art essay". We particularly like the way the stem flows into the tittle on the lowercase ‘i’ in Regular Italic.